I use Jami and Session. Interested to check out SimpleX Chat though.

Fennec

VPNs hide your IP from your ISP and anyone they share that information with. Here in the UK ISPs keep a record of every internet connection you make and pass it on to the government and perhaps others. Using a VPN here means that instead of them knowing every single website you visit they just know you are using a VPN (or Tor, or a proxy etc if that’s what you’re using). All they can tell from that data is what time you’re active online and how much data you upload/download, not which websites you’re visiting.

The websites that you connect to at the other end can still determine who you are by means other than your IP address, like information that your machine presents to them which is unique. VPNs don’t protect against this.

A VPN is like a private courier. What the recipient does with the delivered message (and what you’ve put in it) is out of the courier’s hands.

Just the fact that NordVPN claims to protect your privacy means that the average person hears about privacy a lot

I sometimes wonder if NordVPN has done more for the privacy cause than anything else, purely for the sheer amount of advertising.

Agreed

I guess we disagree a bit then. Don’t get me wrong - I’m not condemning Lemmy. I think it’s extremely valuable in democratising social media. And it functions brilliantly for communication and sharing knowledge. I’m just saying that a side-effect of its functionality is that it’s also addictive. For example I believe that there users who log in, help each other troubleshoot problems growing their tomatoes and then log out, but at the same time there are users who are passively consuming content from the feed way past their bedtime. There are even memes here about it.

I mean that although it doesn’t include the most egregious functions of corporate social media platforms it is still built around features like upvoting/liking, and infinite scroll, which were originally designed to ‘gamify’ social media in order to make it more addictive.

People blame algorithms a lot but I think even the core design means that social media is too addictive. Lemmy is addictive even with no algorithm or dodgy corporate ethics for example.

There’s been a lot of turd-polishing and pleasejustalittlebitbroism when it comes to social media in my opinion.

That looks cool - thanks for the link :)

That sounds cool 👍 If you do decide to make it FOSS I’d be happy to try it out and give feedback.

I know this isn’t directly answering your question and that lots of people will disagree with me on this but unfortunately I think the best option at the moment is to just not let kids go online. The supposed social and educational benefits and the relief from peer pressure/FOMO just don’t justify the damage to their future mental health and understanding of identity.

I’m not personally confronted by this yet because mine are still too young, so take my view for what it is.

I’m a millennial and remember a few kids when I was growing up who didn’t have a TV because their parents weren’t comfortable with the brainrot, even back then. That was thirty years ago and those kids are now successful and confident people, living full lives. And nobody even really noticed at the time that they were the odd ones out because they didn’t watch TV. They are more ‘functional’ than the rest of us.

Things are way more intense now. The people who work for social media companies won’t let their kids on it, which I think says it all.

It’s a shame that the internet as a whole has become what it is because it has/had a lot of positive potential. But even the more ethical and neutral parts of it get infected by the pathological culture and addictive format that has emerged from it. Just look at the judgement and antagonism that you often see here on Lemmy for example. Not to mention the loneliness.

Personally, right now, I would look for a solution that isn’t a smartphone but that’s just me.

I can’t imagine any messenger is private if you invite random people into a group chat 🤦‍♂️

It’s not on your list but I’ve had a Mailfence email for the last couple of years and they’ve been solid.

You could also use YUNOhost to host your own on a VPS. I had no experience before setting mine up and it was fine. Unlimited email accounts and aliases out of the box, plus you can host other stuff besides, like a website, file server or even a fediverse instance.

No, not legally anyway.

Yeah, the ideal amount of content to consume is probably zero. I’m starting to think that the best use of any kind of feed is news about very specific things you want to know about on time and literature which is released in installments.

I use Newsboat on desktop and Feeder on android. Both are foss 👍 If you dont want to use the terminal for desktop I would just use whatever is suggested for the desktop environment you use.

Excellent post. I hope everyone reads this.

I’d like to reinforce your point about RSS feeds. I think that being in control of the amount and type of information that infiltrates your thoughts is a form of privacy that we all we need to exercise.

For those who don’t already know; one great thing about the fediverse is that you can follow hashtags via RSS. You can literally only see the things you want to see, if you want to!

“dadmemes”

If a business makes it too difficult to use them I just use someone else. I’m sure they understand that but are making a killing at the expense of other people.

I add my voice to this request. Cough up the names.

If it wasn’t for the fact that in the UK internet connections are logged I probably wouldn’t bother with a VPN.

It really annoys me that a government choice is forcing me to be wasteful.

If it’s done and dusted because they already have your data then why are they constantly trying to get more?

I use Jami and love it. If you want to use it on a de-googled phone you may not get live notifications though, which is annoying if you want to use it for calls. The simplest solution is to allow it to run in the background but it also allows you to use selfhosted push notifications which is cool. I just let it run an accept the hit to to my phone’s battery. Jami is fairly easy to use and looks friendly too, which is helpful for getting non-technical friends to join you on it.

I struggled with Nextcloud Talk too.

Highly recommend Jami 👍

You can install/update Jami from their official repository. The instructions are a bit buried on their website but they’re there. I also avoid flatpak!

Does XMPP support voice/video calls?

Hey, I came across this site today which sells FOSS merch (including stickers) and thought of you:

https://www.freewear.org

I am totally cool with F-droid.

The usual stuff I guess; keeping minimal or no customer data, located in a country which isn’t participating in international surveillance agreements (Five Eyes et al), no wishywashy privacy policies etc.

Would peer to peer apps be resistant to this sort of thing?

I want stickers too but have struggled to find the ones I want (FOSS software and privacy/digital rights organisations). I do have access to low-cost sticker printing though. I thought a nice setup would be to start an online shop selling these kinds of stickers and use to proceeds to cover the cost of printing + running the shop and to send money to the developers of the applications/organisations.

I haven’t been able to find a dedicated shop for this. Wanna start one?

Apparently there has been an uptick in people using cash in the UK because it helps with budgeting. Which has become more necessary since 60% of inflation started coming from corporate profiteering and four people became able to outcompete twenty million others in the market.

I think it’s really sad how people lose the plot and go and go on murderous rampages against ethnic/sexual/random/political minorities when insurers are sitting right there the whole time.

Google Pixel phones are, ironically, the best supported by de-googling projects like CalyxOS, GrapheneOS and /e/os. They are quite cheap to buy too (especially second hand).

Newpipe works

I’m thinking of doing that with music.

Unless those instance owners have access to someone’s google account data then I’m guessing they have no more data on said user than any other website they visit.

Libretube not working for me.

The only hope is youtube to die

We can live in hope.